We are pleased to announce the release of a new community forum group focused on Best Practices in App Building. This new section of the community will focus on the three primary areas for successful app building: Data, Build, and Design. We are sure this will help app-makers to optimize the success of their apps as well as give all community experts an opportunity to showcase best practices and lessons learned. We are also developing badges, swag rewards, as well as special ‘insider’ advantages for contributing members who add value, and who help others to succeed using PowerApps.

The newest update for PowerApps (version 680) can delegate the Sum, Average, Min, and Max functions to SQL Server. We provide an example of summing a million records in a few seconds and show how it can be used to provide the grouped sum of order line items in an order entry system.

We are happy to announce a suite of new features which come directly from your ideas and suggestions around faster app builds, and a more user friendly experience! Please join me in evangelizing the following six (6) top feature releases this month!

This new app sample was inspired by someone who posted a Forum Idea regarding PowerApp Themes. We really enjoy reading all the forum ideas, and I refer to those who post ideas as our enthusiastic “innovators”. This particular innovator came up with the idea that we should expose our “Themes” (see screen shot below) to the consumer of the app (aka the person running the app), and not only to the designer (or app maker). What an awesome idea! It really shows that they appreciate Empathic Design. Empathic Design is a process that one of my past managers (Karuana Gatimu) has instilled in me. It is a user-centered design approach that pays attention to the user's feelings toward a product. As I thought about this further, I realized that this could also be even more relevant in mobile app design because factors around mobility can affect the way we format the screen; low light, screen glare, etc. depending on where the person is when they are running the app. It also could apply to accessibility, especially for people like me who always wants to make the font size bigger! So, will all those good reasons in mind, I decided to see if I could create my own configurable theme, using the features and formulas that are already in PowerApps today. I love what I ended up with, and I hope you will too! (Please let me know if you expand upon this idea for your own PowerApps in the comment area below.)